Sample taken just after the Muir Fire on October 24th, 2019. Includes green wormwood scent of California sage, the green pitch of Coyote Brush, the toasted anise smell of burned fennel, alkaline soil smells the same way redwood centipedes smell when alarmed and similar to atlas cedar, which by itself smells to me of animal urine. Fire smell of pine tar, oakmoss and cade.

This fire burned only 67 acres and for less than 24 hours but threatened Slide Ranch and closed highway 1 for more than a week.

If you have never smelled a forest fire, you’re missing out on the most important sensory input about this troublesome phenomenon.

I collect samples of the soil, plants, and non-organic materials at sites that have been burned by fire. Back at my studio, I study the components of each sample, sometimes crushing parts or adding fluids to make them volatile. Then I create scents that have the same elements from each site to recreate the feeling of what it was like to stand there and take in the chaos left behind.

A homestead in a redwood forest that has burned to the ground will smell of scotch pine or hemlock spruce oil, the burned rubber lapsang souchong of cade oil, loamy earth of patchouli or copaiba balsam, and the oily residue of crushed shell. The smell of a burned creekside may smell of toasted barley, spicy nutmeg, bitter green mastic oil, and the campfire burn of pine tar.

This panorama shows the firebreak created to stop the fire from spreading. I visited this site a month after the fire had burned, and already the manzanitas, elderberries, madrones, and oaks were sprouting new growth. The old burned bones of deer smelled of burned hair, like a nail salon, and the fresh tracks of coyotes hunting their prey were left along the firebreak to mark a new boundary line.

This home, wood shop, and animal barn were all destroyed by the Kincade fire that began on October 23th, 2019. This hyper-real image I composed from multiple photos is 44 feet by 14 feet, with every object in crisp focus. One should feel overwhelmed by the detail, as I was during my visit.

Along with photos I collected samples for the scent-based part of the work. Smells of scotch and dwarf pines for redwood trees, hiba cedar like pencil shavings from the wisteria vine that once wound its way along the veranda, coipaba balsam of the loamy soil, then the lapsang souchong burned rubber of cade and oak moss of burned lichens.

The Kincade fire burned for 15 days and destroyed 120 buildings across 77,758 acres, more than 100 square miles.